Without exception, obesity rates have risen in every country around the world.

At the low end is North Korea, where obesity rates are up about one percentage point (from 1.6% in 1975 to 2.8% today). Japan is also near the bottom with a mere two point increase since 1975 (from 1.1% to 3.3%).

The largest changes occurred in smaller Pacific Island countries. Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu all saw their obesity rates increase by more than 20 percentage points, a doubling of what they were in 1975.

That country that struck me most of all was China. In 1975, only 0.5% of Chinese adults were obese. Today, China’s obesity rate is about 8%. At China’s current population, the difference amounts to over 100 million people.

How global obesity has changed since 1975

The data for the map comes from an extensive study published earlier this year in The Lancet.

The researchers compiled data from 1,698 obesity-related studies, covering 19.2 million people in 186 countries. They then used the information to estimate the distribution of body mass index (BMI) for every country in the world, for every year from 1975 to 2014.

Between 1975 and 2014, the study estimates that worldwide age-standardized obesity rates (defined as a BMI of 30 or greater) increased from 3.2% to 10.8% for men, and from 6.4% to 14.9% for women.

Put a different way, in 1975 there were 105 million obese adults in the world. Today there are 641 million. (During the same period the world population increased from 4 billion to 7.2 billion).

The rise of obesity (source: Trends in adult body-mass index in 200 countries from 1975 to 2014)

The study also estimates that 2.3% of the world’s men and 5% of the world’s women are severely obese. In 1975, the prevalence of severe obesity was just a fraction of 1% for both genders.

The rise of severe obesity (source: Trends in adult body-mass index in 200 countries from 1975 to 2014)

Obesity by country and gender

The chart below shows the age standardized obesity rates in 2014, broken down by country and gender. It includes all countries with a population of 10 million or greater.

There are some clear patterns by region. In Europe and the U.S., obesity rates for men and women are roughly equal. In southern African countries, the proportion of obese woman is more than double that of men.

The study also makes a prediction of what global obesity may look like in the future.

If the post-2000 trends continue, by 2025, it projects a worldwide obesity rate of 18% for men and 21% for women. Of those, it estimates 6% of men and 9% of women will be severely obese.

For a related map showing the rise of U.S. obesity state-by-state, check out American Obesity in 4 Graphics. If you still haven’t have your fill of obesity maps, see what the world’s obese population looks like visualized as a cartogram (aka obesochart).

I'm an NYC-based entrepreneur (my newest project: Blueshift) and adjunct instructor at UPenn. I'm fascinated by data visualization and the ways that data is transforming our understanding of the world. I spend a lot of time with my face buried in Excel, and when I find something interesting I write about it here and also as a Guardian Cities and Huffington Post contributor.More about my background

Very cool, Max. Thanks for this. What do you make of the wide range of countries like US, China, Romania with little difference by sex, vs. South Africa, Egypt, et al, where there’s a huge disparity? And every country except Hungary, Germany, Romania there are more obese women than men?

http://extropolitca.blogspot.com Mirco Romanato

Female more obese than males?
I would say more females are housewives and do not work outside the family house.

The few cases where it is the reverse, I would say is emigration:
the best females (not obese) emigrate (work or marriage) and the best males (not obese) emigrate as well.

Interesting data. The US started pushing low fat instead of low sugar in the late 70’s. It would be interesting to see sugar intake over time and correlate that to obesity.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Good thought. Don’t know how far it goes back, but the world bank produces some good data on food consumption.

Crazy that the dietary guidelines have not caught on, still discourages fat, promotes fruit juice.

eclectic_reader

The slightly lower fat diet in the 80s was more of a return to pre-WWII macronutrient ratios. During the 50s carbohydrate
intake dropped and fat intake increased. Meanwhile the obesity rate has been going up since before 1910. If you map against macronutrients and calories, total intake of fat, carbohydrates, protein and calories has been on the rise.

Hmm..interesting…India in 2% range is strange…may be obesity is not the only indicator about bad health…In india very less percentage of people do exercise. And its top of diabetic chart…

Where as in norway, Very large population percentage do exercise. And they have average life expectancy of 82 years. …Quite useful info though.

Giuseppe De Santis

people are obese because they eat too much – doing exercises doesn’t play an important role

Keven Entzel

It’s more about what and how often you eat than how much. If you are constantly eating processed carbohydrates you have increased insulin driving fat storage, Because of the blood sugar swings you tend to eat more often and become insulin and leptin resistant. Insulin will keep storing the excess sugar as fat and prevents the body from burning fat for energy. You can eat lots of whole unprocessed veggies along with healthy meats and not become obese. Drop the sodas and candy bars, lose the pasta, limit anything grain based. and quit eating constantly.

http://bodynsoil.com/blog Bodynsoil

I love this post and the graphics you’ve provided. The Age Standardized Obesity Rates, 2014 is by far my favorite. thank you

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Thanks. Yes, there seems to be an obesity gender gap with some clear patterns. Have not yet found a good answer for why.

BIAvi

This really helps to understand how urgent the issue has become over the last 10-20 years. The problem is, we all know it, we know that less sugar and some walks would be a good advise. To fight the disease the founder of BIAvi developed a direct VAT (visceral fat tissue) measurement. We will quote and happily link to your post on http://www.bia-vi.com

Linda Bauld

Hi Max I’m a Professor at the University of Stirling who also works part time for Cancer Research UK (world’s largest independent cancer charity) and we have a programme of research on obesity prevention. I’d like to discuss how we might use some of your work. Could you contact me? Linda.Bauld@stir.ac.uk

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

Hi Linda. Just send you an email.

Suryakant Rathore

Hello mam, myself i loose 40 Kg in 3 years, I am very much interested & determined, in fighting obesity, I am a fitness coach in nagpur, I find that during coaching, people are very weak in commitment & decision making & LACK of will power &
don’t want to understand, how our human bodies responds to different types of food. I resides in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India, asia.

janet wong

You want whale sex? Come to US! Satisfaction guaranteed!

Mickey Zee

This is a cool graphic, but sad statistics. We live in a society filled with eating what is easy, our soil is depleted of minerals, and toxins fill our world. To avoid acute poisoning, your body removes the toxins from your bloodstream and stores them in your body fat. As the burden of toxins
increases, it causes the body’s defense systems to make more and more fat cells to store them. Without any change in food intake, you grow fat as a goose. As a word of encouragement to those who are struggling with this problem, there are solutions with nutrition and intermittent fasting that can help reset your metabolism!

katfancy

You ARE what you eat junk food = obesity and we know most countries ARE serving JUNK everywhere as food

Good fresh green food ends up in the garbage can because it takes a little work to process it… so there you have it … my 2 cents lol.

kel

Great data and graphics, but please learn the difference between percent increase and percentage point increase. For example: “Japan is also near the bottom with a mere 2% increase since 1975 (from 1.1% to 3.3%).” That’s a 2 percentage POINT increase; it’s actually a 200% increase, which tells a very different story.

http://metrocosm.com Max Galka

I stand corrected

Radiana Ferrero

Hello Max, congratulations for the excellent work you have done with these grafics !
I am a PhD student at Ecole Plytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) working on fat tissue biology and I would like to add your world-map figure of evolving obesity prevalence from 1975 to 2014 to one of my presentation. I was wandering if there is a way to make the GIF stop once arrived to 2014… in fact it tends to distract the audience from the presentation when it continuously starts over again from 1975 to 2014…
Thanks a lot for your feed-back.

Suryakant Rathore

Hello , myself i loose 40 Kg in 3 years, I am very much interested & determined, in fighting obesity, I am a fitness coach in nagpur, I find that during coaching, people are very weak in commitment & decision making & LACK of will power &
don’t want to understand, how our human bodies responds to different types of food. I resides in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India, asia.

Angela Golden

I am curious if the map of the US and the world can be used in a presentation I am going to do on obesity or if there is a copyright. I have looked through the site and don’t seem to be able to find it. Oh course I would credit to your site.